Bogus: reduction of road accidents in Adygea needs monitoring of driving schools

A large number of road accidents with severe consequences on motorways of Adygea are largely caused by poor drivers' training; and driving schools should be responsible for their low-skilled graduates, said Adam Bogus, the president of the Motor Racing Federation of Adygea, speaking to the roundtable dated to the World Remembrance Day for Road Traffic Victims.

The event was held in Maikop, the capital of Adygea, on November 15, and was dated to the above World Remembrance Day, which this year is marked on November 20. The participants of the roundtable - state officials, religious leaders and community and public activists - discussed the role and capacity of the society in reducing the count of road accidents in Adygea.

"If many graduates of some driving school get into road accident, it means that is poorly training its pupils; this school should pass re-attestation," said Adam Bogus. "Now, if a driving school graduate is responsible for an accident, which resulted in sufferings of other citizens, nobody - neither his or her teachers, nor examiners - is responsible for training this unskilled driver."

It was reported by Kazbek Mamiek, the acting head of the Traffic Police (GIBDD) Department for the Republic of Adygea (RA), that within 10 months of this year Adygea saw 434 traffic accidents, in which 92 persons were killed and 512 more injured. As compared with the same period of last year, the number of accidents has dropped by 25 accidents, of casualties - by 18 persons, and of those injured - by 54 persons. However, the severity of road accidents in Adygea is still one of the highest in Russia.

"In our republic, 15 persons are killed in every 100 road accidents, while on the average for Russia the figure is 9," Mr Mamiek has explained. "The main cause of accidents is in conscious violations of traffic regulations by all categories of citizens."

According to Adam Bogus, the reason of up to 70 percent of traffic accidents is in drivers' poor driving skills.

Every year, the GIBDD of Adygea is holding, jointly with the Ministry of Education and Sciences, a complex of activities aimed to teach children to safe behaviour on the road. Often, however, such preventive measures are undertaken in junior or middle school forms. Meanwhile, special work in this direction, according to the participants of the roundtable, should be carried out with higher school pupils and students of colleges and universities.

Certain young drivers of Adygea have dozens of violations each; lists of such violators are sent by the local GIBDD to heads of municipalities. According to traffic policemen, 40 percent of all the drivers-road accident participants in Adygea are under 30 years of age.

Kazbek Mamiek has added that citizens' meetings held by municipalities of Adygea are frequently discussing another problem: drunk driving. Often the accidents occurring through the fault of drunk drivers have most severe consequences. This year, 2500 drunk drivers were caught in roads of Adygea.

As noted by Adam Bogus, in Adygea "people often forgive each other quite a lot": "If an offender was caught on the road, and his dad or uncle is a respected person - they'll strike a deal, and the guy will be set free." While in the neighbouring Krasnodar, in his words, the situation is completely different: "Nobody will help there; and the guys themselves behave differently."

Now, within the upcoming three days the participants of the roundtable should prepare recommendations to address the raised issues raised and then monitor the enforcement thereof.